F2P encourages a design where they try to convince you to pay money for instant gratification. This results in people spending money poorly.

If we were perfect rational actors regarding economics, then there wouldn't be much of a difference in models. The fact is, however, we aren't remotely perfectly rational. Games that cater to impulse spending or conditioning you to keep spinning that wheel are ones that take advantage of our psychological shortcomings.

Report this post

You can get longer-term graphs if you want, but Broadband prices have continued to drop further and further and further. Considering that in 2000 most people were on MODEMS, yeah, bandwidth is ridiculously cheap now.

Similarly, computer hardware is a lot cheaper for the performance now.

Jebus...

The cost of BROADBAND has nothing to do with the cost of BANDWIDTH...in fact, the MORE PEOPLE USING BROADBAND THE MORE STRAIN THERE IS ON BANDWIDTH USAGE...gawd...100k people connecting to your 10 year old game sending request around 10kbps has turned into a million people trying to connect sending requests around 100kbps...

Yes the price per MB has dropped from $65ish per MB on DSL down to $18 per MB on a gigbit ethernet but the AMOUNT OF MBs has gone up 100 fold...zipp...right over your head like much of what is being said here.

As for your "computer hardware" comments...im not even going to get into the differences between COMPUTER hardware and SERVER hardware used by corporations with you when companies like Blizzard post production costs to their share holders to show how much just running the servers for their game costs...

Report this post

You can get longer-term graphs if you want, but Broadband prices have continued to drop further and further and further. Considering that in 2000 most people were on MODEMS, yeah, bandwidth is ridiculously cheap now.

Similarly, computer hardware is a lot cheaper for the performance now.

Jebus...

The cost of BROADBAND has nothing to do with the cost of BANDWIDTH...in fact, the MORE PEOPLE USING BROADBAND THE MORE STRAIN THERE IS ON BANDWIDTH USAGE...gawd...100k people connecting to your 10 year old game sending request around 10kbps has turned into a million people trying to connect sending requests around 100kbps...

Yes the price per MB has dropped from $65ish per MB on DSL down to $18 per MB on a gigbit ethernet but the AMOUNT OF MBs has gone up 100 fold...zipp...right over your head like much of what is being said here.

As for your "computer hardware" comments...im not even going to get into the differences between COMPUTER hardware and SERVER hardware used by corporations with you when companies like Blizzard post production costs to their share holders to show how much just running the servers for their game costs...

You get broadband from provider. That provider has to service all of its customers. Any increased costs it has will be passed on to them. So it is certainly comparable. Similarly, ALL computer hardware has gotten cheaper. Smaller die sizes and larger wafers make the chips cheaper. Other improved methods of manufacturing and larger markets also make the price go down as economies of scale kick in.

Your article in no way supports what you are saying. We are not streaming video or teleconfrencing when we play an MMO. The amount of bandwidth they use has not grown faster than the increase in bandwidth available to people. Heck, a quick way to tell is that you see people complaining about latency in MMOs. You don't ever hear someone complaining that they don't have enough bandwidth to play one. Similarly, you could have lots of people playing from one person's home sharing the same connection, but try to stream several high quality videos...and well, that won't work well.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

Originally posted by rdrakken

Originally posted by Warley

... marketing.

They're being dishonest. What they're really saying is that AAA MMO releases are dead. Too much risk involved since copy & pasting other successful products (EA's motto) doesn't work in the MMO industry. EA has tried it twice, both times failing, with Warhammer Online and then Star Wars TOR.

Now, they're moving towards copying the freemium model.

EA only knows how to copy. For example, they went big into the whole FB social gaming scene, but now that is failing miserably; because it was simply unsustainable. I mean, not to long ago, they were declaring that social games were the next big thing. That bubble seems to be bursting real fast.

The freemium bubble is going to burst, too.

You think AAA MMO's have saturated the market? Wait until the big companies really jump into the F2P market. Inferior games, inferior content, inferior game-play, made to look pretty with things that bounce across the screen while stars glimmer and burst everywhere.

Get ready for the next-generation of MMO's, The Age of Mini-Games and Gambling Like Mechanics.

Don't believe me? Go play Free Realms.

Or is it...

dial back the time 8 years. An MMO can not only be a success, but stay profitable with around 100k players. Case in point, Asherons Call, Anarchy Online...go forward 4 years. Anything less than 200k players is thought of as a fail because its near impossible to remain profitable with such a small amount of players paying a sub unless the game has old tech and can be run on weak servers. Go forward another 2 years, a game like Age of Conan is struggling even though its maintaining a playerbase over 200k around the world.

The cost of servers has vastly increased.

The cost of bandwidth has vastly increased.

the salaries of designers has vastly increased.

the cost of production has thus vastly increased.

All of this points to needing a much larger subscription playerbase which is not an easy task looking at the history of the subscription genre. The F2P market however is saturated with players, it is an easily attainable goal to bring in 1 million plus players if done right as several F2P game makers are now at the top of the game maker pile in terms of MONEY being made...hell even Perfect World Entertainment is making as much money as Activision/Blizzard and their games SUCK...and they are NOT even one of the top 3 F2P game makers in the world.

If a company like PWE can make as much as Blizzard...who the hell needs to make their game sub based? Only a fool. Make a good microtransaction shop and watch the money flow in.

With digital delivery that cost has certainly dropped through the roof.

That was some brain fart dude.

EDIT: Added some data.

I'll say that salaries haven't really changed, but how many people are hired to work on a AAA title has gone up quite bit. They are more expensive to make with teams of a hundred or even quite a bit more. They didn't used to hire so many because graphics and other things didn't require as much effort due to limitations. It is part of the reason why there's been an increased emphasis in churning out games faster by big corporations.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by rdrakken

Originally posted by Drachasor

Mostly wrong. Servers have gone down. Bandwidth is cheaper. Salaries have increased (wrt inflation, I'm not at all sure if they are comparatively higher). Production costs have gone up for games that look "modern." High level graphics and so forth require more manhours to make.

And AoC doing badly with 200k makes sense when it has a F2P model with a P2P option. You could make MMOs of the quality of what existed 12 years ago and need relatively few people to play it to make a profit. But getting people to play a new game that looks out of date is not easy if you give it modern pricing.

Mostly wrong. Servers have gone up. Bandwidth is more expensive. I already made the next three points you gave...and you completely ignored the part where I said AoC 2 years ago...and thus before it went F2P...as for your last point...THAT WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF MY POST.

So I guess my question is...why did you bother to reply to my points if you didnt really read it?

The entire notion that Sub based games make more money than F2P games can be easily shot down by taking the most popular sub game in history, WoW, and looking up Activision/Blizzards quarterly estimate, just over 700 million and comparing that to Perfect World Entertainments quarterly estimate of...just over 700 million.

PWE only makes F2P games yet they are going to make as much money as all of Activision/Blizzard.

Sub based MMOs cannot stand up to the money the F2P market brings because it far exceeds the playerbase of sub games. Deal with that simple reality.

You can get longer-term graphs if you want, but Broadband prices have continued to drop further and further and further. Considering that in 2000 most people were on MODEMS, yeah, bandwidth is ridiculously cheap now.

Similarly, computer hardware is a lot cheaper for the performance now. Heck, even equipment designed for a particular task is tending downward. In 2000, it would be next to impossible to buy a desktop for under 1000 dollars, and they'd be the worst thing on the market. These days, you can get computers for a few hundred bucks. Yeah, they aren't gaming ones, but you can build a gaming computer for less than 1000 dollars, whereas 12 years ago it would be close to 2000.

So yeah, regarding costs of things, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Sorry about missing the 2 years ago thing, but....

Looking at AoC 2 years ago, I see that it was bleeding subs. Going F2P wasn't about the current subs not being able to sustain it. It was about the fact that they couldn't maintain the current level of subs so they did something before they lost more people. Much like how SW Galaxies implemented a problem while they were bleeding subs.

I'm not talking about what makes more money. I'm just saying that the reasons you cite for things changing are horribly, horribly wrong. Servers aren't more expensive. Bandwidth doesn't cost more. Etc, etc.

Anyhow, PWE does make some non-MMOs for what it is worth. They also have a whole bunch of games, whereas Activision-Blizzard doesn't release that many. The situation isn't as cut and dry as you pretend. It seems quite clear that WoW makes more money than any of PWE's F2P games. So I can certainly understand the thinking of not going F2P if you don't plan on churning out a bunch of games but want to focus on one.

For what it is worth, I don't think F2P or P2P are good business models for making great games. I prefer B2P. It's pretty clear that you can make a profit with F2P or P2P however and it seems like P2P can generate more profit per game if they are successful enough. If a game isn't as successful, then F2P generates more profit for it.

This, well said.

I always get a good laugh when people say "oh the game now is F2P and it generates 300% more revenue!!1!"

Holy $##&! a F2P garbage game (like every f2p game, they are all horrible horrible games) generates more profit than a dead P2P game with less than 100k subs!!!

P2P is for the big boys now, 8 years of rehashed themepark/wow clones means that if your game doesn't have enough depth and longevity, it will become f2p after a couple of months.

"Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge."

"The idea behind the tuxedo is the woman's point of view that men are all the same; so we might as well dress them that way. That's why a wedding is like the joining together of a beautiful, glowing bride and some guy"-Seinfeld

With digital delivery that cost has certainly dropped through the roof.

That was some brain fart dude.

EDIT: Added some data.

WTF you are posting the costs of WINDOWS BASED SERVERS...do you know ANYTHING at all about the difference between server types?

Secondly, I already stated that the price of broadband has decreased but the BANDWIDTH INCREASE far exceeds that price reduction. A game today is sending out some 10x the amount of information back and forth between host and client than it was 12 years ago...and the cost of bandwidth has NOT decreased 10 fold...thus, it costs MORE because of the AMOUNT of bandwidth being used. Every freaking corporation, even NON-GAMING state that their costs are up in that catagory and it the very reason why almost every single IP is now CAPPING monthly bandwidth for John Q Public.

Third. I love how you excuse the increased cost of designers by...they sucked...as if that means anything to what is being said.

Fourth...are you actually trying to say that it costs the same amount of money to make a game today as it did 10 years ago? Seriously...I would say you had a brain fart but that would require you to have a brain AND wind and I do believe you are missing one of those components.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

This is what EA saying P2P is dead means to me...

EA -- P2P is dead.

Me -- What a lame excuse, for a cover-up. You failed at making an MMO, you made a good TOR game, but not in an MMO setting. You failed, and you don't want to blame yourselves, so you start blaming the community first, than the entire MMO market.

Pathetic.

The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

Originally posted by Slampig

Originally posted by Elikal

Originally posted by Warley

... marketing.

They're being dishonest. What they're really saying is that AAA MMO releases are dead. Too much risk involved since copy & pasting other successful products (EA's motto) doesn't work in the MMO industry. EA has tried it twice, both times failing, with Warhammer Online and then Star Wars TOR.

Now, they're moving towards copying the freemium model.

EA only knows how to copy. For example, they went big into the whole FB social gaming scene, but now that is failing miserably; because it was simply unsustainable. I mean, not to long ago, they were declaring that social games were the next big thing. That bubble seems to be bursting real fast.

The freemium bubble is going to burst, too.

You think AAA MMO's have saturated the market? Wait until the big companies really jump into the F2P market. Inferior games, inferior content, inferior game-play, made to look pretty with things that bounce across the screen while stars glimmer and burst everywhere.

Get ready for the next-generation of MMO's, The Age of Mini-Games and Gambling Like Mechanics.

Don't believe me? Go play Free Realms.

Lol, I don't believe ANYTHING EA says.

What if they told you the sky was blue, or that you needed oxygen to live?

The sky is not blue. The atmosphere is perceived as blue, but the "sky" is most certainly black. You don't NEED oxygen to live. You simply need something like it to fill your lungs and supply your blood.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

Originally posted by Warley

... marketing.

They're being dishonest. What they're really saying is that AAA MMO releases are dead. Too much risk involved since copy & pasting other successful products (EA's motto) doesn't work in the MMO industry. EA has tried it twice, both times failing, with Warhammer Online and then Star Wars TOR.

Now, they're moving towards copying the freemium model.

EA only knows how to copy. For example, they went big into the whole FB social gaming scene, but now that is failing miserably; because it was simply unsustainable. I mean, not to long ago, they were declaring that social games were the next big thing. That bubble seems to be bursting real fast.

The freemium bubble is going to burst, too.

You think AAA MMO's have saturated the market? Wait until the big companies really jump into the F2P market. Inferior games, inferior content, inferior game-play, made to look pretty with things that bounce across the screen while stars glimmer and burst everywhere.

Get ready for the next-generation of MMO's, The Age of Mini-Games and Gambling Like Mechanics.

Don't believe me? Go play Free Realms.

This is a pretty well thought out post and one of the closest descriptions Ive read of where F2P games are leading us. I dont know if I would use "dishonest" as much as I would say its EA just being "clueless". Now with that said, never fear there will always be one or two game in the works or live that dont follow this trend and thats where you will find me and most likely a smaller group of others spending there time (and money). The rest will be on the Gypsy band wagon moving from from F2P to F2P.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

Originally posted by Wolvards

This is what EA saying P2P is dead means to me...

EA -- P2P is dead.

Me -- What a lame excuse, for a cover-up. You failed at making an MMO, you made a good TOR game, but not in an MMO setting. You failed, and you don't want to blame yourselves, so you start blaming the community first, than the entire MMO market.

Pathetic.

Spot on mate. EA can suck my cats arse.!

I would pay a sub for a good game. I still do along with millions of other (not WoW) talking in general.

I won't fall into the EA's world of mirco transactions across EA's entire gaming spectrum. nope nope nope.

With digital delivery that cost has certainly dropped through the roof.

That was some brain fart dude.

EDIT: Added some data.

WTF you are posting the costs of WINDOWS BASED SERVERS...do you know ANYTHING at all about the difference between server types?

Secondly, I already stated that the price of broadband has decreased but the BANDWIDTH INCREASE far exceeds that price reduction. A game today is sending out some 10x the amount of information back and forth between host and client than it was 12 years ago...and the cost of bandwidth has NOT decreased 10 fold...thus, it costs MORE because of the AMOUNT of bandwidth being used. Every freaking corporation, even NON-GAMING state that their costs are up in that catagory and it the very reason why almost every single IP is now CAPPING monthly bandwidth for John Q Public.

Third. I love how you excuse the increased cost of designers by...they sucked...as if that means anything to what is being said.

Fourth...are you actually trying to say that it costs the same amount of money to make a game today as it did 10 years ago? Seriously...I would say you had a brain fart but that would require you to have a brain AND wind and I do believe you are missing one of those components.

WoW servers run on Windows, so do EvE onlines, and just about every other MMO currently out there. And sorry to dissapoint you but if your game required 10KBp/s of bandwitdh 10 years ago it would stil require 10KBp/s to play today, the amount of bandwidth available to you has nothing to do with the amount of data you actually need to send or recieve to play the game. The fact is that with people getting better internet means that you do not have to have local servers any more, and you can settle for "cheaper" datacenters which are not located in major IX's.

Server costs are down considerably, just look at how much it would cost you today to rent a server even at a large service provider like Amazon, and if you do not want virtual machines, rackspace went down to about 50US per 1U where 10-12 years ago it would have cost you around 500US.

The problem with MMO's today is that people demand atleast the same amount of content and quality from a new title as from an existing one even if that title was out for 5 or more years. WoW launched with more content than EQ ever had, and even then it was bearly nothing, 7 instances, 1 15(10 then 15 then 10 again) raid instance, 1 true 40 man instance, and another 1 boss instance, no PVP to speak of. And still it was more than EQ1 or any other MMO ever had at the time. Now you need to make a game which has as much content as WoW has now, after 8 years of cotent updates and expansions.

So yeah ofc the development costs of MMO will sky rocket, and thats even before you start calculating in the insane amounts of money you need to invest in advertisment to compete with a beast that has the market in its pocket.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

Originally posted by Slampig

Originally posted by Elikal

Originally posted by Warley

... marketing.

They're being dishonest. What they're really saying is that AAA MMO releases are dead. Too much risk involved since copy & pasting other successful products (EA's motto) doesn't work in the MMO industry. EA has tried it twice, both times failing, with Warhammer Online and then Star Wars TOR.

Now, they're moving towards copying the freemium model.

EA only knows how to copy. For example, they went big into the whole FB social gaming scene, but now that is failing miserably; because it was simply unsustainable. I mean, not to long ago, they were declaring that social games were the next big thing. That bubble seems to be bursting real fast.

The freemium bubble is going to burst, too.

You think AAA MMO's have saturated the market? Wait until the big companies really jump into the F2P market. Inferior games, inferior content, inferior game-play, made to look pretty with things that bounce across the screen while stars glimmer and burst everywhere.

Get ready for the next-generation of MMO's, The Age of Mini-Games and Gambling Like Mechanics.

Don't believe me? Go play Free Realms.

Lol, I don't believe ANYTHING EA says.

What if they told you the sky was blue, or that you needed oxygen to live?

I would think they couldn't figure out how to make money off lying about it yet.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

Originally posted by DOGMA1138

WoW servers run on Windows, so do EvE onlines, and just about every other MMO currently out there. And sorry to dissapoint you but if your game required 10KBp/s of bandwitdh 10 years ago it would stil require 10KBp/s to play today, the amount of bandwidth available to you has nothing to do with the amount of data you actually need to send or recieve to play the game. The fact is that with people getting better internet means that you do not have to have local servers any more, and you can settle for "cheaper" datacenters which are not located in major IX's.

Server costs are down considerably, just look at how much it would cost you today to rent a server even at a large service provider like Amazon, and if you do not want virtual machines, rackspace went down to about 50US per 1U where 10-12 years ago it would have cost you around 500US.

The problem with MMO's today is that people demand atleast the same amount of content and quality from a new title as from an existing one even if that title was out for 5 or more years. WoW launched with more content than EQ ever had, and even then it was bearly nothing, 7 instances, 1 15(10 then 15 then 10 again) raid instance, 1 true 40 man instance, and another 1 boss instance, no PVP to speak of. And still it was more than EQ1 or any other MMO ever had at the time. Now you need to make a game which has as much content as WoW has now, after 8 years of cotent updates and expansions.

So yeah ofc the development costs of MMO will sky rocket, and thats even before you start calculating in the insane amounts of money you need to invest in advertisment to compete with a beast that has the market in its pocket.

An online game server is not setup like a freaking LAN server...it even goes well beyond a groupware server. Back in 2007 Blizzard was using AT&T as their host, a company with its own on-line gaming datacenter. AT&T CONSTANTLY had job openings for Oracle and Red Hat Linux, not windows. We are talking about out of store software, in house, created to streamline data-flow for each specific piece of gaming software which is almost ALWAYS required due to the way gaming companies set up their database structures. Then factor in are they going with Cisco or Juniper, odds are its Cisco because their support is far superior and now you have to take into account the cost of the Cisco license.

You pay for your in house people even when outsourcing to a datacenter because you need SOMEONE in house that knows the gaming code to tell the people at the dataceneter wtf is going wrong. Then you pay the datacenter to handle the gear, you pay for the gear, you pay for the 50,000 different companies to support what you are using, the company you got the gear from, odds are IBM, otherwise you get no support, you pay Cisco, you pay for the unix/linux/oracle support and if you dont have a person on salary to get there at a moments notice you are boned and all these require a support CONTRACT. Worse yet, if they ARE dumb enough to actually be using a WINDOWS based server...the license and support costs are FAR GREATER and on top of it, going to need it far more often with the steaming pile of cow chips that it is for groupware style servers. That is just the TIP of the costs that fly right over your head because you believe that since joe public can rent out a datacenter space for pennies a major corporation can do it for the same cost.

Because apparently, your needs are the same as the needs of a company running a game like WoW...

As for your comment about how a game that needed to send 10kbps 10 years ago only needs 10kbps today...NO KIDDING! You are not even reading all I am saying, just replying with thoughtless kneejerk reactions.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

Lol @ the bandwidth argument.

Just because there are more people with 30/15 or whatever broadband speed, does not mean more congestion for a server.If the packets being sent/received are 15Kb(yes, I mean bits) in size, then it doesn't matter if your connection speed is 1mb or 150mb. But, you can blame larger packets on the coders for being lazy. Now with all this excess speed, they can be lazy and not have to be as efficient with their work.

Report this post

Explain why you are reporting this post:(750 characters max.)

Originally posted by Elikal

Originally posted by Warley

... marketing.

They're being dishonest. What they're really saying is that AAA MMO releases are dead. Too much risk involved since copy & pasting other successful products (EA's motto) doesn't work in the MMO industry. EA has tried it twice, both times failing, with Warhammer Online and then Star Wars TOR.

Now, they're moving towards copying the freemium model.

EA only knows how to copy. For example, they went big into the whole FB social gaming scene, but now that is failing miserably; because it was simply unsustainable. I mean, not to long ago, they were declaring that social games were the next big thing. That bubble seems to be bursting real fast.

The freemium bubble is going to burst, too.

You think AAA MMO's have saturated the market? Wait until the big companies really jump into the F2P market. Inferior games, inferior content, inferior game-play, made to look pretty with things that bounce across the screen while stars glimmer and burst everywhere.

Get ready for the next-generation of MMO's, The Age of Mini-Games and Gambling Like Mechanics.

Don't believe me? Go play Free Realms.

Lol, I don't believe ANYTHING EA says.

E.A. lol

Sometimes its good to think deep. Some times it good just to play games.